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A 79-year-old woman claims she was met by armed police in Turkey after refusing to pay for a “frozen tuna roll” on a Jet2 flight.
The passenger, named only as Lily, refused to pay £9 for the tuna roll, which she said was frozen in the middle, during a flight from Stansted Airport to Bodrum on 3 November.
Cabin crew reportedly said that since she had opened the wrapper, the passenger would have to pay, and “kept waking her up” to request the sandwich money.
On landing, Lily and her daughter were told to make their way to the exit where four armed police officers were waiting, the Hertfordshire-based woman told BBC Three Counties Radio.
“I was in shock, I was saying to people, ‘I think I’ve been arrested over a sandwich’,” Lily added.
She said the officers told the pair to “just go” after checking their passports.
A spokesperson for Jet2 said: “We can confirm that police boarded flight LS1609 in Bodrum after our cabin crew reported two customers displaying disruptive and unpleasant behaviour throughout the flight, including the illicit consumption of alcohol that had been purchased in duty-free and brought on board.
“As a family-friendly airline, we will always support our cabin crew in instances when they are subjected to disruptive, rude or unpleasant behaviour while prioritising the comfort of everyone onboard so that they can enjoy their flight.”
Lily denied the claims that her behaviour was “disruptive” or that she had brought alcohol on board.
She added that Jet2 cabin crew were “the ones that behaved disgustingly and disturbed me all the way through the flight”.
Her daughter has since complained to the airline about the “upsetting” incident.
It’s not the first time that tuna has caused a stink in the cabin.
Last month, a viral TikTok sparked a debate on plane snack etiquette after capturing a fellow passenger in the middle seat cracking open canned tuna mid-air.
TikToker Ally Jaksen was on a three-and-a-half Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to Seattle when she caught the person sitting next to her opening up a can of Bumble Bee Seafood’s tuna and eating it with Ritz crackers as his inflight snack.
The video, which gained over 1.2 million views on TikTok, sent other users into a frenzy over the fact that a passenger would eat something so fishy at such a high altitude packed next to dozens of other passengers.
“Canned tuna on the plane gotta be up there in terms of crimes against humanity,” Jaksen jokingly captioned the video.
For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast
